General Heinz Guderian Quotes

The notion of implicit communication also has deep roots in Zen, another of Boyd’s primary influences. Thomas Cleary, in his The Japanese Art of War (which may have been Boyd’s all time favorite book, next to Sun Tzu itself) emphasizes the importance Zen places on mind-to-mind communication. As Cleary notes, this has nothing to do with telepathy or other mystical nonsense but clearly means the transmission of Zen through objective experience, that is, through actions in the real world, which is how Boyd and the maneuver warfare theorists build mutual trust and unit cohesion.63 It is true that the Germans did not always apply these principles well, and sometimes forgot them entirely. Len Deighton even claims that there was only one true Blitzkrieg, the May 1940 attack on France.64 Defense analyst and Boyd acolyte Pierre M. Sprey,65 who translated and assisted in several of Boyd’s interviews with the German generals, estimated that the climate was only fully implemented by maybe one-half of one percent of the army—the small circle around Heinz Guderian that Sprey calls “brilliant rebels.” In this sense, the Israeli Army of 1956 and 1967 was superior, man for man, to the German Army of 1940.66

While some biographers claim Rommel had retrieved the goggles from an abandoned British vehicle, stating that “even a general was allowed a little booty,” a 2015 Daily Mail article claims that a British POW actually gave his goggles to the general.  After his capture, Major General Michael Gambier-Parry was invited to supper with Rommel, where he informed the field marshal that his hat had been stolen by a German soldier.  Rommel investigated, and returned Gambier-Parry’s hat, but asked if he could keep the British-issue goggles that the general had left in his staff car.[83]  They became part of his signature appearance, and he was rarely photographed without them after 1941.   Rommel would also receive his moniker, the Desert Fox, in the weeks following his victories there.  In German “Wustenfuchs,” it described a “small fox with a habit of burrowing quickly into the sand to escape predators, affording human occupants of the desert only an occasional fleeting glance.

On the 28th of February 1918, Guderian began to work for the German General Staff, and while he studied to become a staff officer, British inventors were creating a machine that would transform his career. In 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, a new weapon, the armored tank, made its debut.

Only nine weeks after Hitler brought Rommel home from North Africa, his replacement, Colonel General Juergen von Arnim, was forced to surrender to the Allies.  As Rommel had predicted, Africa was, at this point, unwinnable for the Germans.  Over 100,000 German soldiers were taken as prisoners of war, and Italy, now open to invasion, would fall in 1943.[118]  Historian Samuel Mitcham Jr. claims that Hitler told Rommel he had made a mistake, and “should have listened

Hitler, at the behest of von Rundstedt to reinforce France, sent Rommel to the area to shore up German defenses. Finally, as Hitler anticipated an Allied invasion in 1944, he asked Rommel to inspect the Atlantic Wall, in what Young calls “a fake, a paper hoop for the allies to jump through.”[121]  No wonder Rommel was “appalled” as he moved from Denmark into France to make a report on Germany’s lauded defenses.  Young lists the deficiencies Rommel discovered in his inspection tour: army artillery with no cover, lack of concrete shelters at the strongholds, lack of minefields for defense, and a general lack of coordination between the navy and army defenses.[122] Rommel set to work on addressing the issues, but was not given a position of command until January of 1944, which would prove to be too late to save Germany from the Normandy invasion.

On October 14, 1944, German generals Wilhelm Burgdorf and Ernst Maisel visited Rommel in his home in Herrlingen. Outside, SS troops stood by, having been instructed to kill Rommel if he attempted to escape. Rommel was told that he had been accused of associating with conspirators, and had been implicated in the July 20th assassination plot against Hitler. They gave him the choice to die by his own hand, or face a public trial. Rommel was promised that the Nazis would report his death as an accident, and that his family would be left alone. He would leave with the generals, and on his way to Ulm would drink poison